Faced With New Air Standards, California's Earthbound Farmers Are Wary

By CAROL POGASH

Published: July 1, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30—
Beginning Thursday, all but the smallest of farmers in California's fertile San Joaquin Valley will be forced to comply with what critics say are the most stringent agricultural pollution standards in the nation, in an effort to improve air quality.

Under the regulations, which are the result of a new state law, the farmers will become the first in the nation required to seek permits to operate, while meeting governmental air quality standards for the first time.

California produces more than half of the nation's fruits and vegetables and more of its milk, butter and ice cream than any other state, and a third of the state's farms are in the yardstick-flat alluvial land of the San Joaquin Valley, whose air is among the nation's most polluted. The valley has more days when smog levels exceed federal standards than anywhere else in the country. More than 16 percent of children in Fresno County, one of eight counties in the valley, have asthma, caused in part by the pollution, according to a study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles.

Schoolchildren have grown accustomed to indoor recess and the postponement of Friday night football on days when pollution levels are high.

The valley is ringed by the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the east and the Diablo and Coast Range mountains to the west. With searing summer heat, rain only in the winter and an unrelenting stillness in the air, dust and smog-forming emissions from farms and ranches float in a yellowy soup of pollutants that spill over the 25,000 square miles of the valley.

''We're the perfect petri dish for creating and retaining air pollution,'' said Kelly Hogan Malay, a spokeswoman for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which developed the new regulations.

Some 26 percent of ozone-forming emissions in the valley comes from agriculture.

The pollution is caused by ''fugitive'' dust from open fields, nitrous oxide emissions, diesel pumps and emissions from animal manure and urine that vaporize. The rest spews out of rumbling trucks and cars that race up and down the freeways here connecting the southern part of the state with the north.

''We're easy targets,'' said Russel Efird, who grows grapes, almonds, plums and walnuts at his Double E Farms just south of Fresno. While he found complying with the new standards quite simple, some neighbors, he said, will refuse to cooperate.

Michael Marsh, chief executive of Western United Dairymen, an organization representing most of the milk producers in the state, said, ''We're very distressed with the regulations.'' Mr. Marsh said that new regulations could cost large dairy farmers as much as $5 million.

His organization filed suit against the air pollution control district, arguing that the new requirements were based on faulty, ''antique science.'' The study on which the standards were established was conducted in 1938. This week a judge failed to grant a preliminary injunction, which would have given dairy farmers more time for scientific research and compliance.

''Producers want to do the right thing,'' said Ray Souza, a dairyman from Turlock. ''We want a good clean environment for our children, but things have to make sense to us.''

The applications for permits require farmers to document the equipment they have, including the make, model, horsepower and hours of operation of an irrigation pump. That equipment will be grandfathered in, but changes will require farmers to select the best air pollution control equipment available.

Farmers have been given a choice of some 100 conservation practices to comply with the new conservation management practices. They may decide to mulch rather than burn clippings and prunings, to cover soil with vegetation or to till at night when there is a little moisture in the air.

The new regulations came about after State Senator Dean Florez, who is from the San Joaquin Valley, developed a package of clean air bills, which was signed into law last year by Gov. Gray Davis. Praised by environmentalists and vilified by some farmers, Mr. Florez said, ''It was the hardest thing I had to do in my career.''

For decades, Mr. Florez said, the state ''turned a blind eye'' to the problem. ''Health was not as important as industry and jobs,'' he said.

Mr. Florez said the success of his legislation was owing ''single-handedly'' to the children with asthma who were bused to the Capitol to testify about clean air.

With passage of the legislation, farmers of the Central Valley had to comply with the Federal Clean Air Act, which requires states to develop their own clean air plans.

''They're being asked to do what any other industry was asked to do 20 or 30 years ago,'' Mr. Florez said.

The problem, said Cynthia Cory, director of environmental affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation, is that the state's farmers have to compete against farmers in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Arizona, Florida and Iowa, who do not face the same requirements.

''We can't tell a big distributor to pay $25 for a box of oranges from Ventura County rather than $5 for a box of oranges from Chile,'' Ms. Cory said. ''We want a nice clean environment, but it may run our farmers out of business.

''We're probably more regulated than any other farmers in the nation,'' she said. ''Now, we're going to be more regulated. It's going to be a whole new day in California.''

Photo: Russel Efird, who grows almonds, says he has no problem with the new regulations but believes that some neighbors might refuse to comply. (Photo by Tomas Ovalle for The New York Times)